Skoda Auto to invest Rs 100 crore in India

The company is likely to end 2016 with 15,000 units in 2016 posting a flattish numbers, but with 4 new products planned for 2017, Skoda is eying 30% growth in volumes to over 20,000 units in 2017.Ketan Thakkar | ET Bureau | August 03, 2016, 14:45 IST

Skoda Auto to invest Rs 100 crore in IndiaMUMBAI: Having consolidated operations in India in the last couple of years, Czech car maker, Skoda Auto is pursuing volumes from 2017.

The company plans to invest Rs 100 crore in revamping the dealership network with new identity and introduce series of service initiatives to bring in transparency.

The company is likely to end 2016 with 15,000 units in 2016 posting a flattish numbers, but with 4 new products planned for 2017, Skoda is eying 30% growth in volumes to over 20,000 units in 2017.

According to people in the know, Skoda will be launching the face lifted Rapid, which has been significantly engineered locally, followed by premium SUV Kodiaq in the Toyota Fortuner category. The company is also likely to bring in a variant of Octavia in the coming 12-18 months.

Sudhir Rao, MD of Skoda Auto said, the company is not going after the volumes game, but aims to position itself as a value luxury car maker positioned between volumes car maker and luxury car maker, with clear eye on segment leadership or be amongst the top three of segment the company participates in.

"We are looking at higher volumes but not at the cost of profitability. We have gone a long way in improving our operational efficiency and ownership experience. We will aim for leadership in the segment we participate and we expect these segments to become main stream in near future," added Rao.

Skoda is also investing a lot on digitisation of the brand and the customer interface. The company will be launching the MySkoda app from 1st of September, which will increase the transparency with customers.

The company will launch the industry first 4 year warranty of the car service.

The company sells an average of 125 units of Superb in a month and has a segment share of 60% in premium saloon space and it sells about 200 units of Octavia per month with a segment share of 60%. Skoda sells another 1000 units of Rapid per month.

The company expects the new models to bring in incremental volumes from 2017. With the existing portfolio, Skoda addresses just 20% of overall car market, but aims to grab more than half of Rs 10 lakh to Rs 40 lakh price bracket.